Because this was my fight, this was his fight. I didn’t have a right to deny him that. Not when I’d left for Montana without a word. Not when I’d broken every promise I’d ever made him to take care of myself.
My throat tightened. Chase put a hand on my shoulder. Devon didn’t react to the gesture, reminding me that when the situation called for it, he was (a) a first-rate actor and (b) capable of showing restraint. I’d brought Devon here, just like I’d brought Lake, when without me, they would have been fine. They would have been safe.
Fifteen different images hit my mind at once: Sora and the ugly face of Pack Justice; Ali locking up Chase so Callum wouldn’t have a reason to tear him apart; Lake curled into a ball on my bedroom floor; Mitch telling me that some Weres got funny around females. The madman in the woods.
God, what if he got hold of Lake? What if I couldn’t stop him? What if Callum tore Devon to pieces, just for helping me? What if Devon’s own mother was the one to deliver the blows?
I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t take knowing that as much as Lake and Devon had done everything in their power to protect me, always, I couldn’t do the same thing for them. Because I was human. Weak. Stupid.
Trapped.
This time, I welcomed the feeling of claustrophobia, remembering that the last time I’d felt it, Chase had cut his bond with the Rabid. The last time I’d let this feeling take control of my own actions, I’d rewired my bond with Chase.
Could you do it again? The question Lake had asked me once was drowned out by the panic, the suffocation—the need—not to survive but to protect.
I brought my hand up to Chase’s, and the bond between us pulsed and throbbed. With no warning, I became acutely aware of each of our connections to Devon and Lake, and theirs to us.
Mine.
Ours.
Mine.
I could feel Chase’s determination, his willingness to follow wherever I led. I felt my love for Devon in shades of silver, and his for me, equally bright and bittersweet. Mine for Lake. Lake’s for Devon.
And Chase’s for me.
I felt it coming, the way some people could smell rain in the air—a low, uncontrollable rush of power—and I knew. Our bonds to Callum’s pack, to Callum, pulled us back away from one another. They pulled us down and kept us there, drowning, leashed. Inside, I roared, and I saw myself taking the bonds in my teeth, my very human teeth, and ripping through them, the way Chase had torn himself away from the Rabid.
Trapped. Escape. Survive.
Protect.
Beside me, Chase growled, and I felt him, felt Us, Chase-Wolf-Bryn. As we threw everything we had at Devon and Lake and took everything they had in return.
Ours, Chase thought, adding his will to mine, because he knew—he knew I loved them. He knew what it was like to be helpless and completely unable to protect those you loved.
Ours, I replied. Something exploded between the four of us: a wave of knowing. A realignment of the earth. And then, for a moment, there was silence.
Lake was the first to recover. “Huh. You know, I really don’t think other people can do that, Bryn. If it was even remotely possible, my dad would’ve found a way to pull some mojo a long time ago.”
Impossibility. These days, it was my strong suit.
“What just happened here?” Devon asked, still sounding dazed.
I cleared my throat. “I … well, Chase and I … we … ummm … we redid your pack-bond,” I said, hoping Dev wouldn’t be mad.
Can you hear me? I asked silently.
Devon nodded. Like my own thoughts. Your voice—it isn’t coming from outside of me, it’s not coming through an external connection. It’s coming from inside my head.
“Rewiring bonds … it’s this thing,” I said out loud, “that Chase and I do.” This thing we did that, when I’d done it last, had brought Callum’s entire pack barreling down on us.
Lake, playing it cool, pushed back the feeling of awe that I could feel from her end of our connection. “There’re four of us. Does that mean we qualify as a pack now? Because if we do, we need to think of a seriously killer name for ourselves.” Devon opened his mouth and Lake cut him off. “No allusions to musicals, Broadway boy.”
“The lady doth offend my ears,” Devon said. “Begone, foul witch!”
Lake snorted. “I’ve missed you, too, Dev.”
I barely registered the interaction between the two of them, because I was stuck on what Lake had said about Chase and I being able to do something that nobody else could do.
On an unconscious level, I’d assumed that what I’d done with my pack-bond, I’d been able to do because I was human and Pack, connected, but different. I’d spent years manipulating my own bond, protecting my mind from Callum’s pack. And maybe I’d made Chase different, too, or maybe being a turned werewolf instead of a born one had something to do with it. But maybe not. Maybe what it really boiled down to was what I’d known from the moment I first saw him, sprawled in a cage.